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SSRIs a 'Double-Edged Sword' in Major Depression?

Investigators led by Igor Branchi, PhD, Center for Behavioral Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy, explored the hypothesis that SSRIs may not "affect mood per se but [may amplify] the influence of living conditions on mood."

What’s more, the group found that the serotonin neurons themselves were more complex than originally thought. Rather than just transmitting messages with serotonin, the cortical-projecting neurons also released a chemical messenger called glutamate – making them one of the few known examples of neurons in the brain that release two different chemicals.
“It raises the question of whether we should even be calling these serotonin neurons because neurons are named after the neurotransmitters they release,” Ren said.
Taken together, these findings indicate that the brain’s serotonin system is not made up of a homogenous population of neurons but rather many subpopulations acting in concert. Luo’s team has identified two groups, but there could be many others.
In fact, Robert Malenka, a professor and associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford’s School of Medicine, and his team recently discovered a group of serotonin neurons in the dorsal raphe that project to the nucleus accumbens, the part of the brain that promotes social behaviors.

In a series of behavioral tests, the scientists also showed that serotonin neurons from the two groups can respond differently to stimuli. For example, neurons in both groups fired in response to mice receiving rewards like sips of sugar water but they showed opposite responses to punishments like mild foot shocks.
“We now understand why some scientists thought serotonin neurons are activated by punishment, while others thought it was inhibited by punishment. Both are correct – it just depends on which subtype you’re looking at,” Luo said.

Suicide is a national epidemic. We need to treat it like one. - The Washington Post

These two treatments are obviously different, but they both point to an entirely new chemical axis in the brain that could be targeted to treat depression: the glutamine/glutamate axis. Commonly abbreviated Glx, these chemicals are suppressed in people with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and do not increase when patients take serotonin-targeting antidepressants.
The company I lead is working to develop drugs to raise Glx without the damaging side effects of ketamine or ECT. The science is promising: The FDA recently issued a biomarker letter of support, its first in psychiatry under the 21st Century Cures Act, recognizing that an increased level of Glx correlates with decreased levels of depression and that drugs targeting Glx are linked to a reduction in depression and suicidal ideation.

Another Mass Shooting, Another Psychiatric Drug? Federal Investigation Long Overdue | CCHR International

Despite 27 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.

Serotonin receptors in depression: from A to B

Despite the relative success in treating depression by increasing extracellular serotonin, there is a lack of strong evidence supporting a direct correlation between low serotonin signaling and depression. While some studies report an association between levels of platelet serotonin and depression, this has not been a consistent finding in large sample sets, and it is also unclear how platelet levels are related to brain levels of serotonin 10, 11. Additionally, few studies report direct correlations between cerebrospinal fluid 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), a serotonin metabolite, and depression 12, 13. Low levels of tryptophan have been consistently linked to depression; however, these effects could be independent of serotonin 14, 15. The lack of consistent clear-cut abnormalities in global measures of serotonin signaling isn’t surprising if one considers the complexity of the receptors at which serotonin binds, the intricate neuroanatomical circuitry of the serotonin system, and the developmental role serotonin plays as a neurotrophic factor 16– 18. Many recent studies have focused on understanding the mechanisms through which serotonin affects depression by studying the impact of 5-HTT and the 15 known receptors through gene-association studies, human brain imaging, and pharmacological and genetic mouse models 19.

Do You Believe It? Verbal Suggestions Influence the Clinical and Neural Effects of Escitalopram in Social Anxiety Disorder: A Randomized Trial - EBioMedicine

Using truthful or deceiving verbal instructions, we tested how expectancies influence SSRI efficacy in social anxiety disorder. The number of responders was more than three times higher after open administration of escitalopram 20 mg compared to covert administration of the drug presented as “active placebo” in a cover story. Correct vs. incorrect information about the SSRI also yielded different neural changes in brain areas involved in emotion-cognition interactions.

Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect

Many patients in clinical trials realize that they have been given the real drug, rather than the placebo, most likely because of the drug’s side effects. What effect is this likely to have in a clinical trial? We do not have to guess at the answer to this question. Bret Rutherford and his colleagues at Columbia University have provided the answer. They examined the response to antidepressants in studies that did not have a placebo group with those in studies where they did have a placebo group (Rutherford, Sneed, & Roose, 2009). The main difference between these studies is that in the first case, the patients were certain they were getting an active antidepressant, where as in the placebo-controlled trials, they knew that they might be given a placebo. Knowing for sure that they were getting an active drug boosted the effectiveness of the drug significantly. This supports the hypothesis that the relatively small difference between drug and placebo in antidepressant trials are at least in part due to “breaking blind” and discerning that one is in the drug group, because of the side effects produced by the drug.

Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect

The most commonly prescribed antidepressants are SSRIs, drugs that are supposed to selectively target the neurotransmitter serotonin. But there is another antidepressant that has a very different mode of action. It is called tianeptine, and it has been approved for prescription as an antidepressant by the French drug regulatory agency. Tianeptine is an SSRE, a selective serotonin reuptake enhancer. Instead of increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain, it is supposed to decrease it. If the theory that depression is caused by a deficiency of serotonin were correct, we would expect to make depression worse. But it doesn’t. In clinical trials comparing the effects of tianeptine to those of SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants, 63% of patients show significant improvement (defined as a 50% reduction in symptoms), the same response rate that is found for SSRIs, NDRIs, and tricyclics, in this type of trial (Wagstaff, Ormrod, & Spencer, 2001). It simply does not matter what is in the medication – it might increase serotonin, decrease it, or have no effect on serotonin at all. The effect on depression is the same.

The Lilly Suicides - Adbusters | Journal of the mental environment

Reports that Prozac might be unsafe at any dose had Lilly running scared. As early as 1990, one executive stated in an internal memo that, if Prozac is taken off the market, the company could “go down the tubes.” With the US Food and Drug Administration asking questions, Lilly was pressed to show that their drug was safe. The result was published on September 21, 1991.
Authored by Lilly employees, the report claimed to represent all existing data comparing Prozac with either older antidepressants or placebos. In fact, the data had been handpicked to favor the drug and the company. The analysis dealt with 3,065 patients, less than 12 percent of the total data from Prozac studies at the time. Among those whose data were left out was the very population most likely to become suicidal –the five or so percent of patients who dropped out of the clinical trials because they experienced unpleasant side effects after taking Prozac.

Volunteers taking part in the early trials were never asked whether they experienced any suicidal feelings or the restless agitation which can be the precursor of a suicide attempt. If patients in later trials said they felt suicidal, it was recorded as part of their depression.

Sexual Consequences of Post-SSRI Syndrome

There are some indications that antidepressant-emergent sexual dysfunctions do not always resolve after discontinuation of the medication and can persist indefinitely in some individuals. Although some or all sexual side effects that start with the use of SSRIs might continue after stopping the medication, other sexual complaints can develop. Decreased capacity to experience sexual pleasure is the most frequent characteristic of this syndrome.

Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration

Drug–placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients. The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication.

Reductions in function within the serotonin (5HT) neuronal system have long been proposed as etiological factors in depression. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most common treatment for depression, and their therapeutic effect is generally attributed to their ability to increase the synaptic levels of 5HT. Tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) is the initial and rate-limiting enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway of 5HT in the CNS, and losses in its catalytic activity lead to reductions in 5HT production and release. The time differential between the onset of 5HT reuptake inhibition by SSRIs (minutes) and onset of their antidepressant efficacy (weeks to months), when considered with their overall poor therapeutic effectiveness, has cast some doubt on the role of 5HT in depression. Mice lacking the gene for TPH2 are genetically depleted of brain 5HT and were tested for a depression-like behavioral phenotype using a battery of valid tests for affective-like disorders in animals. The behavior of TPH2–/– mice on the sucrose preference test, tail suspension test, and forced swim test and their responses in the unpredictable chronic mild stress and learned helplessness paradigms was the same as wild-type controls. While TPH2–/– mice as a group were not responsive to SSRIs, a subset responded to treatment with SSRIs in the same manner as wild-type controls with significant reductions in immobility time on the tail suspension test, indicative of antidepressant drug effects. The behavioral phenotype of the TPH2–/– mouse questions the role of 5HT in depression. Furthermore, the TPH2–/– mouse may serve as a useful model in the search for new medications that have therapeutic targets for depression that are outside of the 5HT neuronal system.

Is serotonin an upper or a downer? The evolution of the serotonergic system and its role in depression and the antidepressant response - ScienceDirect

The role of serotonin in depression and antidepressant treatment remains unresolved despite decades of research. In this paper, we make three major claims. First, serotonin transmission is elevated in multiple depressive phenotypes, including melancholia, a subtype associated with sustained cognition. The primary challenge to this first claim is that the direct pharmacological effect of most symptom-reducing medications, such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), is to increase synaptic serotonin. The second claim, which is crucial to resolving this paradox, is that the serotonergic system evolved to regulate energy. By increasing extracellular serotonin, SSRIs disrupt energy homeostasis and often worsen symptoms during acute treatment. Our third claim is that symptom reduction is not achieved by the direct pharmacological properties of SSRIs, but by the brain's compensatory responses that attempt to restore energy homeostasis. These responses take several weeks to develop, which explains why SSRIs have a therapeutic delay. We demonstrate the utility of our claims by examining what happens in animal models of melancholia and during acute and chronic SSRI treatment.